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Whereas J.J. Abrams and Co. established a lot of smoke and mirrors around Benedict Cumberbatch’s chief villain in Star Trek Into Darkness, the identity of Star Trek Beyond‘s big bad has been laid out ahead of time – Idris Elba’s towering baddie, Krall.

Placing his proverbial crosshairs on the USS Enterprise and everything the legendary space vessel represents, Elba spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the unhinged, predatory nature of Krall, and the three-hour make up process necessary to layer on the villain’s prosthetics.

“I play Krall. This is a man with a definite purpose. I say a man, but he’s not a man. Or is he? What’s interesting about him is that he has a real beef with what the Enterprise stands for. Krall’s a character who’s deeply steeped in hatred — in my opinion, a well-earned hatred — for the Federation. It felt quite political. There’s a relatability to what’s happening in our world. Not everybody’s happy with what everybody calls the good guys.”

In related news, Simon Pegg has reflected on the ways in which die-hard Trekkies helped mould the script. Once screenwriter Roberto Orci exited Beyond, the torch was passed to Pegg and Doug Jung to nail down a screenplay for Paramount’s threequel, and recently the actor-cum-writer revealed one of his primary sources of inspiration. Per ComingSoon:

“We had the entirety of ‘Star Trek’ history at our disposal and it’s always there online,” says Pegg. “There’s an amazing Wikipedia online called Memory Alpha. It became Doug [Jung] and my resource and the place that we’d turn to whenever we wanted to know, ‘What kind of weapons does an NX vessel carry?’ Memory Alpha has it. We actually wrote to the Memory Alpha guys and got them to name a certain device in the movie. I sent them a letter saying, ‘Can you come up with this for me?’ In two hours, they came back with an entire etymological history of what the thing was. It’s beautiful. It’s fantastic to have that support network.”